This application claims priority to French Patent Application No. 0114452 filed in the French Patent Office on Nov. 8, 2001, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
The present invention relates in general manner to demand regulators with dilution by ambient air for supplying breathing gas to satisfy the needs of a wearer of a mask, using feed from a source of pure oxygen (oxygen cylinder, chemical generator, or liquid oxygen converter) or of gas that is highly enriched in oxygen, such as an on-board oxygen generator system (OBOGS). The invention also relates to individual breathing apparatuses including such regulators.
The invention relates particularly to regulation methods and devices for breathing apparatuses for use by the crew of civil or military aircraft who, above a determined cabin altitude, need to receive breathing gas providing oxygen at at least a minimum flow rate that is a function of altitude, or providing, on each intake of breath, a quantity of oxygen that corresponds to a minimum concentration for oxygen in the inhaled mixture. The minimum rate at which oxygen must be supplied is set by standards, and for civil aviation these standards are set by the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR).
Present demand regulators can be carried by a mask; this is the usual case in civil aviation, unlike combat aircraft where the regulator is often situated on the wearer""s seat. Such regulators have an oxygen feed circuit connecting an inlet for oxygen under pressure to an admission to the mask, and including a main valve, generally controlled pneumatically by a pilot valve, and a circuit for supplying dilution air taken from the ambient atmosphere. Oxygen inflow is started and stopped in response to the wearer of the mask breathing in and breathing out, in response to the altitude of the cabin, and possibly also in response to the position of selector means that can be actuated by hand for enabling normal operation with dilution, operation in which oxygen is fed without dilution, and operation at high pressure. Regulators of that type are described in particular in document FR-A-2 778 575, to which reference can be made.
Those known regulators are robust, they operate reliably, and they can be made in relatively simple manner even for large breathe-in flow rates. However in order to be able under all operating conditions to comply with the minimum flow rates for oxygen (taken from the pure oxygen feed and from the dilution air), they suffer from the drawback that it is necessary to make them in such a manner that over the major portion of their operating range they draw pure oxygen at a rate that is well above the rate that is actually necessary. This requires an aircraft to carry an on-board volume of oxygen that is in excess of real physiological needs, or else it requires the presence of an on-board generator of performance that is higher than absolutely essential.
Proposals have also been made for an electronically-controlled regulator for feeding the breathing mask of a fighter pilot (patents FR 79/11072 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,590). That regulator makes use of pressure sensors and electronics that control an electrically-controlled valve for adjusting the rate at which oxygen is delivered. Dilution air is sucked in via a Venturi. The electronically-controlled regulator has the advantage of enabling the rate at which pure oxygen is supplied to be matched better with physiological requirements. However it suffers from various limitations. In particular, dilution depends on the operation of an ejector. The way in which the pure oxygen flow rate and the dilution air flow rate are controlled means that when controlling the flow rate of pure oxygen it is difficult to take account of the oxygen brought in by the dilution air since its flow rate is itself a function of the oxygen flow rate and of other state parameters (in particular the breathe-in demand from the wearer). In most cases, the flow rate of pure oxygen will be at a level that leads to excess oxygen being supplied to the wearer, and no provision is made to use the electronic control system in such a manner as to obtain operation that makes it possible under all conditions to supply an oxygen flow rate which is as close as possible to the minimum required by regulations.
The present invention seeks in particular to provide a regulation method and device that are better than those known in the past at satisfying practical requirements; in particular it seeks to provide a regulator making it possible to cause the oxygen flow rate that is required from the source to come close to the flow rate that is actually needed.
For this purpose, the invention proposes an approach that is different from the approaches that have been adopted previously; it relies on acting in real time to estimate or measure the essential parameters that determine oxygen needs (cabin altitude, instantaneous volume flow rate being breathed in, reduced to cabin conditions, percentage of oxygen in the inhaled mixture as required by regulations where regulations exist and as required by physiological considerations, . . . ), and to deduce therefrom the instantaneous flow rate at which additional pure oxygen needs to be supplied at each instant.
Consequently, in one aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of regulating the flow rate of additional oxygen taken from a pressurized inlet for oxygen coming from a source and admitted into a breathing mask provided with an inlet for dilution ambient air, the method comprising:
measuring in real time the ambient pressure and the instantaneous inhaled breathe-in flow rate in terms of volume reduced to ambient conditions (directly or by measuring the rate at which dilution air is inhaled into the mask, while making allowance for the additional oxygen);
on the basis of the ambient pressure, determining the minimum oxygen content to be achieved in the inhalation cycle in order to comply with respiratory standards; and
controlling said instantaneous flow rate of additional oxygen in such a manner as to satisfy the requirements of the applicable standards with a safety margin that is generally a few percent.
Provision can be made for the dilution air to be regulated by adjusting the flow section by means of an altimeter capsule and without using a Venturi. Regulation can also be performed by means of a controlled valve, again without an ejector, in which case the favorable characteristics of regulators that are purely pneumatic are associated with those of a known electronically-controlled regulator.
In a first implementation, the flow rate of additional oxygen continues to be estimated throughout the inhalation period. This leads to adjusting the total volume of additional oxygen supplied during the complete inhalation phase. In another implementation, which in theory enables even more oxygen to be saved, account is taken of the fact that the respiratory tract contains a volume that does not contribute to gas exchange. More precisely, the last fraction of the breathing mixture to be breathed in does not reach the pulmonary alveoli. It does no more than penetrate into the upper airways of the respiratory tract, from which it is expelled into the atmosphere during exhalation. In another implementation, the method makes use of this observation, e.g. by detecting the instant beyond which the instantaneous inhaled flow rate drops below a predetermined threshold which is taken to mark the beginning of the final stage of inhalation during which oxygen is no longer used, and then switching off the supply of additional oxygen.
In yet another implementation, which makes use of the above observation that best use is made of the additional oxygen which is delivered during an initial phase of the breathe-in cycle:
an estimate is made at the end of each breathing cycle of the total quantity of oxygen that is going to be required during the following inhalation (e.g. by calculating an average over a plurality of preceding cycles); and
the total required quantity of additional oxygen is delivered during an initial stage of inhalation.
A comparison is then performed during the following stage of the inhalation cycle between the evaluated standard cycle and the way in which the real cycle takes place; in the event of a difference leading to a requirement for more oxygen than that forecast, additional oxygen is supplied in a quantity that is determined as a function of that difference.
In all cases, once the quantity of oxygen required by physiological needs has been determined, a calculation is performed to determine the quantity of pure oxygen that needs to be added in forced manner to the oxygen contained in the air inhaled directly from the surrounding atmosphere at a rate which is generally not under control, which air contains oxygen at a concentration of 21% (or higher if a conditioned atmosphere is used).
The invention also provides a regulator device comprising:
an oxygen feed circuit connecting a pressurized inlet for oxygen coming from a source and admitted into a breathing mask via a first electrically-controlled valve for directly controlling flow rate;
a dilution circuit supplying air from the atmosphere directly to the mask;
a breathe-out circuit including a breathe-out check valve connecting the mask to the atmosphere; and
an electronic control circuit for opening the electrically-controlled valve for directly controlling flow rate as a function of signals supplied at least by a sensor of ambient atmospheric pressure and by a sensor of inhaled air flow rate or of inhaled total flow rate.
The air flow rate sensor may be embodied in various ways. For example it may be of a commercially-available type that generates a pressure drop. Such a sensor determines head loss on passing through a constriction and supplies a signal representative of flow rate. The sensor could also be of the hot-wire type.
Such a structure is xe2x80x9chybridxe2x80x9d in that it associates characteristics of a pneumatically-controlled regulator for air flow rate with the characteristics of electronic control for the flow rate of additional pure oxygen, thus making regulation more flexible.
The terms xe2x80x9coxygen under pressurexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cpure oxygenxe2x80x9d should be understood as covering both pure oxygen as supplied from a cylinder, for example, and air that is highly enriched in oxygen, typically to above 90%. Under such circumstances, the actual content of oxygen in the enriched air constitutes an additional parameter for taking into account, and it needs to be measured.
The flow rate control valve may open progressively, or it may be of the xe2x80x9con/offxe2x80x9d type, in which case it is controlled by an electrical signal carrying pulse width modulation, with an adjustable duty ratio and with a pulse frequency greater than 10 Hz.
The control relationship stored in the electronic circuit is such that in xe2x80x9cnormalxe2x80x9d operation the regulator supplies a total flow rate of oxygen that is not less than that set by regulations for each cabin altitude, the total oxygen being taken both from the source and from the dilution air.
In general, regulators are designed to make it possible not only to perform normal operation with dilution, but also operation using a feed of expanded pure oxygen (so-called xe2x80x9c100%xe2x80x9d operation), or of pure oxygen at a determined pressure higher than that of the surrounding atmosphere (so-called xe2x80x9cemergencyxe2x80x9d operation). These abnormal modes of operation are required in particular when it is necessary to take account of a risk of smoke or toxic gas being present in the surroundings. The electronic circuit may be designed to close the dilution valve under manual control or under automatic control. An additional electrically-controlled valve under manual and/or automatic control may be provided to maintain positive pressure in the mask by applying positive pressure on the breathe-out valve, thereby tending to close it.
The dilution valve is advantageously closed by means of a two-position electrically-controlled valve having one state which causes the dilution valve to be closed by bringing its seat against a shutter carried by an element responsive to the pressure of the ambient atmosphere, and another position which brings the dilution valve seat into a determined position enabling the flow rate of dilution air to be adjusted by moving or deforming the element.
The invention may be embodied in numerous ways. In particular, the various components of the regulator may be shared in various ways between a housing carried by the mask and a housing for storing the mask when not in use, or any other external housing, including an in-line housing, so that it remains directly accessible to the wearer of the mask. For example:
the pure oxygen feed circuit may be located entirely in a housing fixed on a mask; or
a portion of said circuit, and in particular the first electrically-controlled valve, may be integrated in a box for storing the mask ready for use.